Movin to the country, gonna eat me a lot of peaches….

Category Archives: Property Inspection

I’m slowly turning black and blue from all the self pinching. I keep looking at the photos thinking “that’s MINE!!!!!!!!”. It seems real and that the same time it doesn’t. I’m super excited but at the same time I feel this deep level of calmness that I didn’t expect. I thought I’d be doing constant backflips all over the room all day long but I’m quietly peaceful, tranquil almost ;}. I think that because I’ve been looking for MY place for so long and have actually found a place that ticks every box and then some… it’s hard to believe that a) it actually exists and 2) it’s actually mine and I will be living there. So for perhaps the final post in the Property Inspection category I’ll post some of the pics.

The lovely grassy area by the river.

The view from the veggie patch, overlooking the river

The view from the veggie patch to the back of my property… that’s allllll MINE! Right to the top of the back ridge.

I don’t want to post too many photos of the house n stuff just yet as it’s not officially mine. Privacy and all y’know.

My brain has been going at turbo speed thinking about all the things I want to do and what to do first. Really random things like planting white climbing roses over the edge carport and what to plant in the bare flower beds. Had to giggle that they’re there, bare, ready for me to plant exactly what I want to plant. Like the rest of the house, in decent condition but just needing me to put my stamp on it all and make it mine all mine. In the grand scheme of things there is nothing that NEEDS to be done (except that carpet I posted before but in it’s own way it’s a “design feature” (I’m being kind)). It’s all perfectly liveable but I’m just itching to customise it all. In particular the walk in closet. I have great giant squeeeeeee moments every time I think about it and how lush it’s going to be when I finished. When I really think about it, seeing that at the property inspection kinda sealed the deal for me as I liked the rest of the photos but they hadn’t taken a photo of the WIR so I was dying to see what it looked like and the fact that it’s MASSIVE! *sigh* did I mention I can’t wait to move in? mkay just checking 😉

I’ve been getting an interesting reaction from friends who I’ve told that my offer has been accepted on a rural property and that I’m moving to the boonies and that’s “why would you want to do that??” accompanied by a look of horror. (not that it’s really the boonies mind you, only 45 mins from civilisation ;}). And I’ve refined my half an hour response detailing permaculture, aquaponics, and sustainability down to a couple of words. “I want to live a simpler life and be more self sufficient.” Sums it all up nicely in a little nutshell without me hopping on on the soapbox and coming across as an absolute raving loon. I want to wake up in the morning and revel in the absolute fucking quiet and go get my breakfast from my chickens before I head off to desk jockey for the day. I want to be able to come home from work and pick my dinner from the garden and talk to the chooks as they head back into their coop in the orchard. And revel in the absolute peace and fucking quiet and tranquility. Mhmmm! Can’t wait!!!!

Well I had a look at the property on Saturday and yep it is in fact AMAZEBALLS. Mhmm I just typed that… (I am afterall a hipster right? ;}) There’s no better word to describe it. Better than the photos in the listing that’s for sure. AND it comes with chickens!

So I put in an offer yesterday… and the agent just gave me a call with a few detail questions about settlement and exchange…. And he’s going to call me back soon. I’ve started getting nerves now. Could this be it? Will I finally be a property owner????? I keep waivering between “it’s going to happen” and “it’s not the one”. If staring at your phone was a national sport, I’d be the bloody champion. Ring damn you!!

This last week has been insanely hard to concentrate on anything other than the property. Well except this weekend as I finally got to see it and I had a bit of a buzzkill on Sunday but building a bridge moving on. Man I’m busting for a wizz but I don’t want to have to take my phone into the loo in case it rings bwahahahaaa. Can you imagine me getting the good news while I’m on the loo? Hilarious. or is that hilarsbears (hipsterspeak).

Well my brain is positively exploding! I’m going to see the property on Saturday morning and I can’t wait. Can’t concentrate at work, can’t concentrate at home. I feel really restless but that could just be the full moon. I spoke to the bank yesterday and my finance is basically organised. The guy told me to go ahead and make an offer if I wanted to YAY! I’ve been thinking about all the things I want to do to the house. Not that it needs much work mind you, it’s perfectly liveable the way it is (apart from maybe the bedroom carpet which is WILD! This is just a snippet from one of the listing photos).

It’s just the things I want to do to update it and make it MINE. In a way it’s been good that I’ve been daydreaming about building my strawbale house for almost 2 years as I know exactly what I want and I’ve refined those decisions a zillion times. I still wish I could build my strawbale place, particularly for the insulating properties but that’s life eh. The good thing is that most of the things I want to do like the bathrooms and kitchen are things I’ve already done before so that will save me some money. Just need a good electrician and plumber for the fixings.

And have been thinking about outdoors, what I’m going to plant where, what I’m going to build where. Thinking about compost and where I can find a stack of hay/lucerne for free 🙂 My brain is a tornado I tells ya… 1 more day to go 🙂

Well I went to go check out that property on Saturday and it’s not “THE ONE”. Bloody Google Earth getting my hopes up. Well it’s not really their fault but I feel like I need to blame someone hahaha. Anyway it’s a gorgeous spot, really top notch and in the right price range (tick) and exactly in the area I want to be (tick), it’s got the river (tick) and is mostly bush (tick)… BUT the one negative is a pretty big one to get over and not something I really expected. But let me start from the start.

Off I trekked (35 mins exactly from work so ummm not exactly a trek but shoosh I’m telling the story here) on a fine and sunny Saturday morning. I always find it so odd when I’ve obsessively looked at some land from the air via Google Maps and Google Earth for so long that when I actually see the place from the road, I know it so well despite never having been there. It’s a very odd sensation. So I found the turn off, drove through the gate and down the reasonably potholeless road (tick). Passed this cute lil fella and a few dozen of his mates: (he turned at the last minute to give me his good side, he sat there staring at me for a while when I stopped. Probably as if to say “whatchoo lookin at starebear, take a photo it lasts longer”… so I did) :

And there, exactly where the agent said it would be, was the gate to my block. Gorgeous spot. SO quiet as I got out of the car… just the birds and the locusts/crickety type things clicking away in the grass. So I ignored the faded “Trespassers will be prosecuted” sign and strolled on in. I did have the agent’s permission to be there by the way… just makin that clear before the lawyers are called. Strolling up the hill, further up the hill…. the hill that’s slowly getting steeper….. til I get to this:

Hmmmmm… The spot that I was thinking of building after looking at it from the google maps is at the top of that… And on the other side of that hill is also the river. There is NO WAY that a concrete truck is going to be able to get up there to lay the foundations for the house….. BUGGER!! And once I get up there and find the area I’d looked at so many times on Maps, it’s not actually flat, it just doesn’t have any trees and is rocky and hilly. DOUBLE BUGGER!!!! There are suitable building spots on the other side of the hill but the concrete truck thing just makes that all impossible. And the only other real spot to build is roughly here which is about 5 mins from the gate:

but that means you’ve got to proper trek up the hill and down again to get to the river… which is not exactly what I had in mind. Pity because I really liked this spot. How’s the serenity? 😉

(this is actually taken from the highway gate)

I did actually have a bit of a cheeky idea about another bit of land as I was driving home from my expedition but I don’t think I can quite tell you about it until I’ve done it (nothing illegal). I’ll certainly let you know if it pans out!

Poor lil neglected blog! It’s been positively ages, my apologies, hope you didn’t miss me too much. Things have been super hectic in the last month. Spent a week packing and shifting my stuff into storage and am now ensconced back at my Mum’s house. While I was moving I had some odd moments of looking at all my things after playing a massive game of tetris with them in my storage unit and just feeling really strange that my “life” fits in a 3m x 3m box. As I was talking about in the previous post, the things that define who I am and what I’m about. Pare that all away and it’s just me 🙂

It’s always weird being back with the parental unit but it’s different this time and in all reality I have it pretty good so I have no complaints. Probably the only one is that I miss being alone 🙂 So the house is sold, the money’s in my bank and the new house owners have moved in. Hope they’re enjoying it and are immune to incessant irritating dog barking. I’m enjoying the peace and quiet at my Mum’s. Only thing bugging me there is the carport gate banging in the wind but that’s nothing that a lil foam tape won’t fix!

Other than that just been busy with work work work. And now on to the housey stuff! A friend sent me a link to a straw bale house builder that I hadn’t come across yet:

I really like their philosophy and will probably give them a call to see what we can do. Reading their website has made me start seriously thinking about what I want my house to look like and get down to some of the nitty gritty details.

ooooh which reminds me, did I mention that I’ve found my dream bit of land? 40 mins away from work, mostly bush with a little bit of cleared land and with a giant stretch of river. BUT there are two problems…. 1) they want more than what I want to pay for land (although there are existing unapproved “house” structures on it that I could live in which are actually glorified sheds) 2) they may not accept my offer as it’s on the low end of their price range and c) I may not be able to build my house on it. I went to have a look at it last week and it’s glorious. Very hard not to fall in love with it. I’m going to have to talk to the council to see whether it’s eligible for building approval because the way the agent was talking made it sound like it would be tricky. Not sure why as there are other houses in the valley. The sheds are livable as the current owners have been living in them for the last 9 years but that’s not my “forever home” ideal. So if I can’t build there’s that property out the window 😦 And if I can then that means that I’m going to have to wait a few years before I can afford to build as it’s over my land budget and eats into my house building budget. So… we’ll see….

So I went out to look at the place I mentioned last week and wooowww…. It’s awesome! The river is gorgeous, the block is really pretty bush, lots of firewood and a really nice house site facing the river, overlooking a little valley. Can’t really see the neighbours up the back and I could probably fence the access road if I really wanted to. The old sand mine is pretty interesting. I always find it quite strange to actually see a site after I’ve been perving on it on google maps for so long. The sand mine looks nothing like I had imagined and it looks like they’ve done quite a bit of preservation work on the mine site to stop erosion and restoring the vegetation. Still lots of sand and pebbles left if I wanted to use them :). The bottom of the mine now has a pond which drains towards the river so with some nice reed plantings etc it could become a nice habitat.

The view from the top of the sand mine (you can see the pond at the bottom). It’s tiered down to the bottom. (click to enlarge)

And the river… wow. I walked straight through the property towards the river and was just blown away. It’s kinda hard for my tiny brain to comprehend that I could have that in my back yard for my enjoyment at any time that I wanted. It’s really quite lovely, there’s just something really mesmerising about the sound. There is a really nice sandy beach area close to where I would consider putting the house and the rest is a little rocky. But hey I’ve got my own sand mine so I could just truck it over to the place I want to extend my beach haha – truely lovely.

The first pic is the view from the access road down towards the river crossing then me standing in the middle of the river crossing looking upstream, then downstream (and as always you can click the pics to enlarge them) Taken from my phone so they’re not the best quality.

The rest of the block is basically bush with lots of kangaroos around and a few wombat holes as well. Wombats have this weird habit of shitting on things like rocks or tree stumps – and wombat shit is square which is another brain warping concept. I assume it’s a territorial thing but its pretty funny to walk past a big rock with a shit on it and think how did it get it’s little butt up that high to deposit it? (edit: I just had to google why they have square crap because my brain is warped like that so here’s a good link in case yours is too http://zactopia.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/why-you-should-give-a-square-shit-about-wombats/). The block has a nice little valley running through it with a natural cleared path through the middle which was a bit eerie when I first found it cuz it’s really random – thick bush vegetation then bam cleared path… yes yes I have an over active imagination 😛 ). It’s very lush and the ground at the bottom it quite mushy and a few little watering holes around so that could be good for planting fruit and veg (with a little plant relocation of the irisy looking plants. There are two dams on the property but I could only find one which was so cute.

The bottom of the valley with the cleared path, the second photo would be the potential house site facing north, and another shot of the valley.

Strange the things you find on a property! On the top of one of the hills over looking the valley there was a little bit of rubbish… and an old kiddies firetruck. Very cute!

One of the little dams that I could find and a shot of the bushland.

And the negatives… the road noise for one. It’s not deafening or anything like that but you do hear the whhhhhwwhhhhh in the background, even out the back of the block near the river. So I’m not quite sure if that’s a dealbreaker for me or not. It’s not an irritating noise but it is there so over time I may tune it out but I don’t know that for certain. It could end up pissing me off to the max and I don’t want to have to sell because I’m irritated all the time. Heheh that’s the whole reason I’m trying to move! I’m thinking of going back again next weekend to sit and listen and think 🙂 Considering it ticks all the boxes in regards to price, bush block, water and close to work (40-45 min drive) its weird to find some completely unknown factor that could be the deal breaker.

The other potential negative is the access road through the middle. There was no sign of the people up the back so I’m not sure how often they use that road – whether they’re commuters as well or are farmies who only go into town once in a while. In a way I’d like to meet and talk to them before I decide one way or another as they’d basically be driving through my land, and potentially twice a day. I might have another chat to the real estate agent to find out what he knows about them and also if I can get a squiz at the contract for sale to see what other info it contains. When I spoke to him on Friday he mentioned that the driveway requirements had changed so I’ll have to find out exactly what that means and also the impact on my price reduction 😉

So it’s a bit of food for thought… It’s not 100% perfect but it’s close – I may not find something that is 100% perfect so does that mean that I need to sacrifice some of my “wish list” stuff to get something that’s close enough to what I want? There’s a part of me that wants to hold out for “the one” but my impatient side says BUGGER THAT in a very loud voice. And it just annoys me that land-wise I’ve already found the perfect one which wasn’t perfect price wise… but I’m trying to move on from that ;}

The one thing that finding a contender has spurred me on to doing is to actually list my property so that if I do find “the one” then I’m ready to make an offer. Where as if I find it tomorrow I’m going to have to wait til I sell my place and I could potentially miss out and that makes me nervous (and I’d be EXTREMELY pissed off…). So I’m going to finish off the last of my improvements and get it listed. If it sells before I either find “the one” or have decided to buy the contender then I can store my stuff and move in with my Mum. Had a chat to her about it on the weekend and she’s ok with that. So there ya have it… will keep ya posted 🙂